Chapter Twenty Three

 May 2003

We are in Perth. It feels strange to be in a city again. I feel strange. I feel wrong.

   Steve sings the Frank Sinatra song Love and Marriage. I wonder if he's trying to scare me away by pretending to be too keen. I wonder if I'm paranoid.

   It's our last few weeks together. I will travel along the south coast soon, and Steve, who has been all round Australia now will stay here and look for work.

   We stay in a twin room instead of a dorm. A twin room is cheaper than a double. As soon as we are in he pulls off my clothes, pushing me on to the bed, his hands all over me, just in case I forgot who I belong to.

   We go to a pub in the evening. Steve finishes his drink before me and goes to the toilet. Someone takes his empty glass away and I am sitting alone with my drink.

   A man walks up to me.

   'Don't sit here on your own,' he says, 'come and join us.' He has a Manchester accent.

   I shake my head. 'My boyfriend's just-' I gesture towards the toilet.

   The pub is noisy I don't think he hears what I'm saying.

   'Come on, join us.' He indicates his friends, a group of men by the bar.

  I shake my head. 'I'm waiting for my boyfriend to come back.' 

   He still doesn't seem to hear. 'You look lonely."

   I shake my head. He gives up and goes back to his friends.

   Steve comes back.

   'Let's go,' he says. There is a note of annoyance in his voice. I wonder if he saw the man talking to me. I finish my drink quickly. It leaves a sickening feeling in my stomach.

   Steve walks ahead of me. As we get near the door the man with the Manchester accent steps in front of me.

   'Don't go,' he says, 'stay and talk to us.'

   I shake my head and step round him, catching up with Steve, who is striding ahead of me. He doesn't need to look back to know I'm following. He has me on an invisible lead.

   Back in our room he sneers at my naked body. 'You won't always be perfect,' he says. 'You'll get old and fat and saggy and no one will want you then.'

We argue about politics the next day. I am horrified that he is a Conservative voter. He's right wing. I don't understand the right wing mindset.

   He doesn't think people should get benefits.

   'But what about my friend?' I say. 'She got pregnant at seventeen with a drug addict in his thirties and now she's a single mother. Are she and her son meant to starve?'

   'She shouldn't have got pregnant, should she? And the baby's dad should be paying for it.'

   He says that people like his brother, who work hard to build a successful business from nothing shouldn't have to pay to support other people.

   'Doesn't he want to help people?' I say.

   He calls me a loony leftist. I call him an evil Tory bigot.

   I am close to tears. He laughs at me.

   'What's it they say?' he says. 'Never discuss politics or religion with the one you love.'

   We look around the city. We find a huge shopping mall.

   'You could get lost in there for days,' says Steve. 'I'm lucky you're not a normal girl.'

   So he thinks I'm weird. I've tried hard all this time to be normal. Obviously I failed.

   'It's not that I don't like shopping,' I say. 'Just not with other people.'

   There is a large tower block somewhere. 

   'You don't expect to see something like that here,' says Steve. 'Reminds me of where I grew up.'

   He looks at me as if he expects me to be shocked he grew up somewhere with tower blocks. There was no shortage of tower blocks in the town I grew up in either. I don't know why he pretends to be hard and working class when he's so obviously soft and middle class.

   I shrug. 'There's towers blocks in every town.'

   'But it's surprising to see them here, though.'

   'I suppose,' I say, though I'm not really surprised.

At night I dream that Steve is a hairy Neanderthal man. I wake, gasping. I have to split up with him.

   I look at him sleeping in the other bed.

   He is not hairy at all. Not a Neanderthal.

   But still that thought remains: I have to split up with him.

Love and Marriage by Frank Sinatra